‘Frankly speaking, I wouldn’t publish an ad that promises a 195% increase in the share price in three years if I ran BrokerCreditService. This promise is partly true, but it is partly untrue as well. I’m not sure how the company did its calculations, but, in whichever case, any fund has both successful and less successful investors, all of whom invest in different things. BrokerCreditService could claim the figure denotes the profit the most successful investor would manage to make, while the less successful investors would make less or none,’ Director of NAUFOR’s (the National Association of Securities Market Participants) Ural branch Radik Akhmetshin announced in the course of a press conference on pyramid schemes and the state control over financial and investment institutions.

‘As a matter of fact, a person without any special knowledge of the financial market would find it hard to tell a law-abiding company from a fraudster judging by such an ad only. I feel I need to discuss the issue with BrokerCreditService,’ he added.

‘Of course, they haven’t violated any law or anything, one is allowed to refer to the profitability the company has actually had (provided one quotes the time period and warns the customers the business’s previous profits do not guarantee the same revenues in the future). One is not allowed, however, to announce one’s future profitability, that’s something the Federal Antimonopoly Service watches out for very carefully. And even the past profitability figures need to be more accurate; BrokerCreditService should have quoted its average profitability or something between 15% and 70%,’ Mr. Akhmetshin noted.